Cameron cutie Claire Perry faces industrial tribunal after she sacks her best friend

Claire Perry, the rising Conservative star, claims that her friend lacked the
skills needed to continue working as her assistant.

Claire Perry says her pal lacked work skills

By Richard Eden

7:30AM BST 22 Jul 2012

As one of David Cameron’s loudest cheerleaders, Claire Perry has regularly spoken up for the Coalition’s austerity programme. Now, however, the former banker will be forced to defend in the most public fashion a painful cut that she made to her own office.

Mandrake can disclose that Perry, who is tipped for promotion by the Prime Minister, is being taken to an industrial tribunal by her best friend.

Penelope Nurick, who was one of Perry’s seconders when she stood as the Conservative Party candidate in Devizes, Wiltshire, at the last general election, claims that she was unfairly dismissed by the MP, who had given her a job in her office.

The hearing, which is scheduled to take place in Bristol next month, will be particularly awkward for Perry, who will have to convince the members of the tribunal panel that her friend was not up to the job that she had carried out for two years.

The pair were such good chums that the graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford, had happily employed one of Mrs Nurick’s children.

“It is a very sad situation,” Perry admits to me. “Nothing could be sadder, as we were close friends. Her son was even an intern here.

“There was a redundancy of a very valued member of staff and she has now decided to take this to a tribunal. As an MP, I have a fixed budget and it meant I could not keep her on.

“Staff changes in my Westminster office meant that her job was absorbed within a broader policy and management job for which she did not have the skills or experience. She was therefore made redundant.”

Perry, who is the parliamentary private secretary to Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, adds: “She was offered other work within my local office, which she declined to accept. Mrs Nurick was very upset as a result of this decision.

"It is a matter of huge regret to me that we have not been able to reach an agreement, as she was both an extremely valued employee and a friend. I hope very much that some sort of agreement can be found.”

The comprehensive-educated Perry, 48, is a colourful figure who has hit the headlines several times since she succeeded Michael Ancram, the former Tory chairman, as the MP for Devizes, a safe seat.

Last year, she wondered aloud in the House of Commons tea room whether she needed to perform a sexual act on John Bercow, the Speaker, before he would allow her to be heard. She had been overlooked in a debate on tuition fees.

Earlier this month, she accidentally disclosed her private telephone number on a social-networking website. The MP, whose crassness in referring repeatedly to the “swinging ---- culture” of the City of London on Radio 5 Live raised eyebrows, was reported to have rung a senior political journalist and had a frank conversation with him in the mistaken belief that she was speaking to Tim Loughton, the children’s minister. “Claire could be brilliant, but there’s a danger she could self-destruct at any point,” warned a political commentator.